Steam will soon be here for Linux users!

Linux users have been waiting for Steam for what seems like forever, but good news is on the horizon as the newly created Valve Linux Blog has confirmed that it’ll be coming to Ubuntu “within months”.

But why Ubuntu? There are so many Linux distributions out there such as Debain, Gentoo, openSUSE, and Fedora, that the choice may make some of you a little bitter to see Steam come to such a “safe” and “windows like” distribution. The Valve Linux Blog has prepared themselves for that question and the answer goes something like this:

Why Ubuntu? There are a couple of reasons for that. First, we’re just starting development and working with a single distribution is critical when you are experimenting, as we are. It reduces the variability of the testing space and makes early iteration easier and faster. Secondly, Ubuntu is a popular distribution and has recognition with the general gaming and developer communities. This doesn’t mean that Ubuntu will be the only distribution we support. Based on the success of our efforts around Ubuntu, we will look at supporting other distributions in the future.

So lets not throw our rattles out of the prams just yet. Ubuntu is just a start and hopefully in the not so distant future Steam will be available on wide spread of distros.

So far Valve have been working on porting Left 4 Dead 2 to Ubuntu along with OpenGL so you get the full gaming experience that you’d expect on Windows.

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James Harding

To be honest it doesn’t really matter what distro they release it for, the linux community will re-package it and make it available for other distros. As an Arch user, I’m sure it wont be long after Steam gets released until we get a version in the AUR (Arch User Repository).